190 HEMOLYSIS AND SERUM CYTOTOXINS 



All these agents seem to effect hemolysis by acting on the 

 stroma, for when the stroma of corpuscles hardened in formalin 

 has its lecithin and cholesterin removed with ether, saponin, a 

 powerfully hemolytic substance, seems to have no effect. The 

 action of saponin and of many other hemolytic agents can be 

 prevented by the presence of cholesterin in excess, suggesting 

 that it is this constituent of the stroma that is affected. 1 



The fact that chloroform, ether, bile salts, and amyl alcohol 

 will cause laking is probably intimately connected with the fact 

 that lecithin and cholesterin, important constituents of the stroma, 

 are both soluble in these substances. 2 Arseniuretted hydro- 

 gen, when inhaled, causes intravascular hemolysis, and there are 

 many other drugs and chemicals with the same property, among 

 which may be mentioned nitrobenzol, nitroglycerin, and the 

 nitrites, guaiacol, pyrogallol, acetanilid, and numerous aniline 

 compounds. Probably the hemolysis produced by autolytic 

 products belongs in this category. 3 The bile acids and their 

 salts will also produce hemolysis, as seen in jaundice. Sodium 

 bicarbonate solutions of one or two per cent, are hemolytic for 

 some varieties of corpuscles, but 0.1 per cent. Na 2 CO 3 and 

 NaHCO 3 do not cause hemolysis. 



Leucocytes are dissolved by some of these agents, particularly 

 the bile salts, although they are affected by no means so rapidly 

 or so much as are the erythrocytes. There seems to be no- 

 relation between the erythrolytic and leucolytic powers of these 

 substances. Water causes swelling, with solution of the granules 

 in time, and the same is true of ammonium-chloride solutions. 



HEMOLYSIS BY SERUM 



Normal blood-serum of many animals causes hemolysis to 

 greater or less degree when mixed with red corpuscles of another 

 species of animal, and this property can be greatly increased by 

 immunizing the animal with red corpuscles in the usual way. 



hydes (except paraldehyde), ketones, ethers, esters, antipyrin, amides, urea, 

 urethan, bile acids and their salts, (c) Slightly permeable for neutral amino- 

 acids (glycocoll, asparagin, etc.). 



Inorganic substances, not including the salts of the fixed alkalies, (a) Com- 

 pletely impermeable for the cations Ca, Sr, Ba, Mg. (6) Permeable for NH 4 ions, 

 for free acids and alkalies. 



1 Kansom, Deut. med. Woch., 1901 (27), 194; Robert, " Saponinsubstan- 

 zen," Stuttgart, 1904; Abderhalden and La Count, Zeit. exp. Path. u. Ther., 

 1905 (2), 199. Noguchi (Univ. of Penn. Med. Bull., 1902 (15), 327) found 

 lecithin without this property. 



2 See Koeppe, Pfliiger's Arch., 1903 (99), 33 ; Peskind, Amer. Jour. Phys., 

 1904 (12), 184. 



3 Concerning hemolysis by alcohols, ketones, etc., organic acids, and essences* 

 see Vandevelde, Bull. Soc. chim. de Belgique, 1903 (19), 288. 



